terça-feira, 4 de novembro de 2008

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J J R disse...

The video on YOU TUBE titled The Best Air Race Pilot Ever has raised a whole lot of debate, and most of it negative suggesting the video is FAKE.

There is a possibility that the video could be fake, but in reality the feat of surviving a broken wing is entirely possible in some cases. Let me explain.

Flying Instructors point of view:

The advantage of a aircraft such as those flown in these Air Race events have a massive advantage in that they have tremendous power to their advantage. The power to weight ratio is so high that it is entirely possible to use it as a tool to assist in a emergency landing as witnessed in the video. This is not possible with aircraft with smaller power to weight ratios.

Let me take you through the steps of what I think happened and I stress the words "I think" because the aircraft was not always in view, and I could not see all the control surfaces that were in use when the aircraft was still higher up.

Upon the wing snapping off, initially the pilot was out of control and temporary confused as to what was wrong. At this point I imagine that he looked out to his right side and noticed he was missing a wing.

Now instinct kicked in. This is not natural born instinct, this is like the instinct like you would apply breaks the moment you saw danger ahead of you on the road. The pilot in this case KNEW what he had to do. You can bet your bottom dollar that these aerobatic pilots are fully aware of the risk of loosing a wing and they already planned what they would do in light of such a catastrophic event. But I guess this is like medical insurance. Medical insurance is something you pay for, but hope you never have to use.

When the pilot finally new he had lost his wing, instinct told him "Get the nose up first" For this he would have used his elevator to force the tail down so he could get the nose up. While doing this he would have needed to use his only working aileron to stop the spinning. This he did successfully.

In the video he disappears out of view after you first see him spiralling down seemingly out of control, then reappears in somewhat more control than before.

Now there is possibly very little time to work with as the wing that was lost has possibly caused a fuel problem that will show it's ugly head next, and if the pilot knows this he will not hang around the sky too long but get toward the ground quickly.

For this the pilot now has to use the power of his prop as part forward thrust, to have effect of controls over remaining control surfaces and part helicopter effect because he no longer has wings to fly with, the only large wing he has left is no longer an advantage as a wing but as rudder type control.

The only wing he has left is in fact the entire body of the plane including the tail which in fact has become his wing with an elevator effect and his real elevator has now becomes the tail with rudder effect. He uses these new alternative controls to fly the aircraft on a knife edge manoeuvre.

The knife edge manoeuvre is not knew to pilots who fly aerobatics, it is one of their talents they display during a an aerobatic show. It something they have done for hours and hours and has become an instinctive part of flying.

With these new controls the pilot was able to use his tail and rudder to apply sufficient control together with all the prop thrust at his disposal to keep the aircraft in a controlled nose up, while using the elevator to steer himself towards the intended runway.

Once lined up he maintained a steady controlled knife edge just above the runway, and at the very last moment he used his only working aileron to rotate the plane anti-clockwise, and as the plane was horizontal, the pilot used elevator to bring the nose down fast, to get the wheels down quickly, hence the bounce as witnessed.

It's really hard to put into writing the whole procedure, as many control applications would be done simultaneously which all adds up to a incident from which you walk away.

Summing Up.

This pilot was able to do what appears to be a miraculous recovery from a very bad situation. He was able to do it because he had a PASSION for flying. He practised his PASSION over and over and perfected his skill. He survived because he had the tools, he developed the skill and used them to his advantage to save his life.

Likewise a man who has a PASSION for the true Word of God, and applies it in his everyday living will also save his life.

See also:

http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view4420766.html